Jamestown officials are making a push to reverse President Donald Trump’s cuts that would largely eliminate the Community Development Block Grant and HOME programs.

To be honest we can see both sides of the issue. City officials on an already thin budget don’t want to lose both the program money that they use on housing projects that help low- to moderate-income city residents as well as the administrative portion of the grant program that helps pay the salaries of city staff who work on housing and development. The president, meanwhile, sees a program that audits have shown doesn’t always end up being used to help cities meet their housing needs while looking for ways to cut federal spending, which most people should be able to agree is bloated and needs to be reined in.

Locally, there is an argument to be made that decades of CDBG and HOME program spending in Jamestown has still left the city with a housing problem. There are still run down houses in need of repair, houses that need to be torn down and a lack of affordable housing despite federal investment.

We would argue that there is a role for CDBG and HOME program funding in cities like Jamestown, but the programs should be changed.

The same set of spending cuts, however, affects a major push for Chautauqua County. We’re talking about the Essential Air Service program, which county officials have been trying to bring back to the Chautauqua County Airport in Jamestown after the U.S. Transportation Department ended the county’s air service subsidy nearly a decade ago. Trump is proposing to end that program as well. It’s hard to justify the subsidy to small airports that don’t typically have the mass of passengers needed to sustain passenger air service on their own at a time when the federal government is running massive deficits each year.

County officials said they have been talking to airlines – but that was before the president announced his intention to end the Essential Air Service program. Following that intention, obviously, means air service here would have to stand on its own here. We have our doubts.

None of this should be new and, frankly, should have been expected. CDBG and HOME program spending was on Trump’s chopping block during his first term as president. The Essential Air Service subsidy was pulled from the Jamestown Airport during Trump’s first term. The signs that these programs were going to change or be cut entirely were there. These are the sort of choices governments have to make when the money starts running dry. For too long, the U.S. government has been spending as if the money tree would never stop flowering. Trump’s budget is a needed dose of financial reality for a federal budget that too often resembles a fairy tale. There will be local ramifications to spending cuts – and local officials would do well to start preparing now.